via www.commoncensus.org

The above map shows the geographical distribution of fan support for MLB teams. I thought it was interesting when I saw it and thought I would share. A quick note: gray areas are those in which there were not enough respondents to give them a color. Some of that may be because those areas are sparsely populated. So I think it's safe to color in places like Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas as Cardinal country, even though the areas on this map are gray. In the Mountain West (outside of the Denver region) such extrapolation may be more difficult, and in fact baseball may simply not as much reach in those places.

A few thoughts: look at the base of support for the Braves. Considering that they are a relatively new team (moved to Atlanta in 1966), the coverage is impressive. But much of it may have come at the expense of the Cardinals. Until the Braves moved to Atlanta, the Cardinals were the southern-most team in MLB. Not too long before that, they were also the western-most team. That, combined with the reach of KMOX, created many Cardinal fans in the South and West. My father, for example, grew up a Cardinals fan in Raleigh, NC because he could listen to the games every night (having Musial and Red and then Gibson and Brock on those teams could't've hurt either). Granted, the plural of "anecdote" isn't "data," but I get the impression that my father's experience was not rare.

However, as more teams moved South and West, and as expansion put teams in places like Kansas City and Houston, a large part of the Cardinals fanbase was cut out. This process largely occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, but it may have had the greatest effect on the children of the 1980s. By then, the teams that had moved in the 1960s and '70s had largely settled, and the "KMOX effect" that had been so prevalent earlier in the century gave way to the "Superstation effect" by which children in the South could watch and follow the Braves on TBS (and those in the Northern Midwest could follow the Cubs on WGN). The parents may have remained Cardinals fans (or not), but their children would be drawn to the Braves, or the Royals, or the Astros, or the Cubs. Further expansion into Florida and Colorado regionalized fan bases even further.

The Cardinals still have a very large geographical population; at a glance, it even appears to be larger than the Cubs' footprint. It has long been a point of pride for the franchise that the team unified a "Cardinal Nation" that stretched all across the United States. But the territorial reach of that Nation is nothing like it used to be. This may be to the detriment of the team, as the opportunities for marketing and merchandising have grown steadily over time, just as the regional reach of the club has shrunk. But it's certainly been good for MLB overall, since greater regional engagement with fanbases have raised the profile of the sport in the South and West, which are now some of the richest regions of the country.

Anyway, I just thought the map was interesting. I have long been interested in what I call the "Sociology of Baseball" and how it has changed and reflected national trends over time.

hey guys... just noticed that there's a special on the 1946 Cards v. Red Sox World Series on MLB Network tonight at 10:30 EST (9:30 CST). short notice, but it should be interesting. Musial against Teddy Ballgame, if nothing else.

i know this isn't an appropriate fanpost, so i'll delete it after the program ends. or a mod can delete it now and put a notice on the front page or something. just wanted people to see it.

in the comments of yesterday's main thread, LB made an important statement here, which i'll excerpt:

a factor i completely overlooked in the main post is the high opportunity cost that attends any long-term deal that’s handed out to a pitcher. when you lock in a mediocrity (or worse) with a long-term guaranteed deal, it costs another, potentially better player a chance to come in and upgrade your organization.

he goes on to say that opportunity costs go both ways, which is definitely true. i replied in that thread trying to flesh out that point, but i think that it might get missed by a lot of people since i posted it late at night towards the bottom of the thread. but here's what i said with a few improvements:

herein lies the problem with citing opportunity costs: you never know in which direction those might point, because none of us have perfect information ahead of time. the entire point of using the concept of opportunity costs as a decision-making tool assumes that actors act rationally, and actors can only act rationally if they have complete (or near complete) information about the outcomes of the alternatives in front of them. those assumptions don’t hold here.

as examples: nearly everyone here (including me) decried the Looper signing at the time, and yet we got one above-average relief season out of him and are in the middle of getting two roughly average starting seasons, all well below the established market value for those levels of production. nearly everyone here hated the Wellemeyer signing last year (including me) because he was gonna take a spot away from a younger player who had more room to develop. then everybody hated his movement from the bullpen to the rotation for the same reason (even more: he was replacing Kid Reyes). Welly and Loop have been pretty huge successes for us, given the cost and the performance of the players they replaced. Encarnacion (even before his unfortunate injury) and Kennedy have not been. Piniero, in my view, is in the middle.

several years ago, the Cards decided not to sign Burnett because he wanted a fifth year added on to the contract. some here supported that decision and some opposed it. in retrospect, given the contracts to pitchers like Suppan, Batista, and Silva, the Cards should've either included the 5th year or bumped up their offered Average Annual Value of the contract by offering more money over 4 years. but it was impossible to know at the time: Burnett had a history of injuries and inconsistent performance. if we'd had Burnett for the past three years, we might've been better able to absorb the injuries to Carp, Mulder, and Wainwright over the past two years. then again, maybe Waino never would've made it into the rotation. maybe Reyes and/or Wainwright would've been traded for somebody else.

all of these are opportunity costs of a selected action. some of them might've worked out. some of them might not have. the point is, you never know beforehand, so simply citing “opportunity costs” without qualification — or even definition — doesn’t really mean anything.

so if we hadn’t signed Welly and Looper (or if we would've signed Suppan, Batista, Silva, or Burnett) we would’ve suffered the opportunity cost of losing (or gaining) the marginal benefit of their production over their replacements. in some cases, that would have been a net gain. in some cases, it would have been a net loss. both the positive and negative gains are examples of opportunity costs, but that fact alone doesn’t tell us anything about whether or not we should sign FAs in the future, or simply promote from within.

the point is, as LB mentioned but didn't really elaborate, opportunity costs run in both directions. we’re dealing with imperfect information here and can’t predict future performances with certainty, so simply citing “opportunity cost” as the sole or primary reason not to sign a FA (or as a reason *to* sign one) is nothing more than a rationale for a previously determined preference. there's a word for that: "bias". it would be just as (in)valid to say that playing an unproven prospect rather than signing an established vet entails an opportunity cost, albeit in the opposite direction, and that would be a bias as well.

the concept of opportunity costs is powerful in its simplicity, but we need to understand what it really means. many on this board -- including me at times -- are biased in favor of player development over signing players with established levels of mediocre performance. sometimes those decisions are correct; sometimes they aren’t. but the concept of opportunity costs is value-free; it doesn’t automatically swing in either direction. opportunity costs should be part of an argument when discussing roster management decisions, and should be used in the context of predicting player performance (and, hopefully, measuring that projected performance in context of the marginal monetary costs). otherwise, it doesn't really help us, and can in fact cloud our judgment.

anyways, yeah. we all have biases, but let’s be careful not to let them sway our judgments too much. especially when we’re tossing out "scientific" theorems in support of our ideas.

our long national nightmare is over.

traded to the Indians for AA RP Luis Perdomo, a power arm with a plus-plus fastball, a decent slider, and a work-in-progress changeup. he regularly hits 95-96 apparently. he's 24, which might be a little high for AA, but he's doing well there. 

all in all, we traded a pitcher with no value and no future here for a decent power arm. it's not amazingly great, but i think it's pretty good for us. add Perdomo to Perez and Motte. in a few years, we might have a lights-out 7-8-9 combo.

doesn't do anything for this year, tho.